Recent hearings in the U.S. Senate concerning Supreme Court appointments have stimulated interest about how to interpret the Constitution. It is helpful to return to the document itself and assess the circumstances in which it was written and ratified.

All too often, critical analysis is replaced by excessive awe and, more often, ignorance. Slogans about the “intent of the framers” and “strict construction” abound, but scarcely any consideration is given to what those terms mean.

“Dark Bargain” is a long-overdue corrective to these misapprehensions and casts the discussion in a new light. With sound research and a lively style, Lawrence Goldstone shows there was no such thing as a single “original intent.” The idea that such an intent, directing its drafters as though it sprang full-blown from the head of Zeus, would have been considered absurd even by them.

Of the many framers, which one’s “intent” governs? Was it the South Carolina delegate who fought to keep slavery as a matter of economic necessity for his home state? The representative from Connecticut who abhorred it as an insidious evil? Were the delegates from Virginia, the key state, of one mind? Whatever the position taken, Goldstone argues clearly and convincingly that slavery was at the heart of the matter.

Was there a consensus about the meaning of the document or how it was to be interpreted? Too often, the image presented is a fanciful one of 55 bewigged men meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 to form a nation based on the theoretical intricacies of Locke and Montesquieu. That those 55 and the people they represented had differing interests is glossed over.

Describing the Constitution as a political document achieved through bargaining and compromise is considered irreverent. Yet common sense and an objective imagination of its history compel one to conclude that “original intent” is a myth. The inherent inadequacies of its slavery provisions would eventually lead to a near collapse of our nation itself.

When the convention delegates came to the critical issue of determining legislative control, the slave states demanded that the slave population be counted for purposes of legislative apportionment. The northern states protested, observing that the pro-slavery forces insisted slaves were property, not people.

One compromise resulted in the provision that slaves would be counted as 3/5 of a person. This formula came from the 1783 congressional apportionment of taxes under the Articles of Confederation. Having accepted 3/5 when it worked to their advantage, slave states were hard-pressed to reject it as implausible when used to determine population. Such was their pragmatic bargain.

When nominees for the Supreme Court are being considered, it is senseless to linger over questions about original intent of whether the candidate believes that the right to privacy is implicit in the Constitution. What matters is that the Supreme Court’s decisions have been most respected when they have deferred to values already accepted as just and true by the American people, and have been most roundly criticized when values under the cloak of constitutional principles had not yet achieved that consensus. The question of any nominee is, “How will you discern between the two, and what path will you follow?”

“Dark Bargain” helps us understand why that is the necessary and fair inquiry. That it does so in such a robust, entertaining and accessible style is an advantage that even the Constitution’s drafters would have appreciated.